


wishing you luck

by stonedlennon



Series: how we won the war [4]
Category: The Beatles
Genre: 1930s, 1939, Alternate Universe - World War II, Bittersweet, Leaving Home, M/M, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 21:09:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9625466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonedlennon/pseuds/stonedlennon
Summary: Paul's convoy leaves. He looks for someone in the crowd. September, 1939.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i've started including photos in the narrative to help illustrate the atmosphere of this series! they're all actual photos of whatever is happening in the story, so they're all sourced from liverpool, 1939. this entry may be short, but i want this series to be a series of snapshots? i suppose? of the war? but honestly i keep coming up with ideas for things, so.. buckle up!

_Then cheer up, my lads, with one heart let us sing,_  
_Our soldiers, our sailors, our statesmen, and king!_

 _\- Heart of Oak,_ Royal Navy, 1760.

* * *

 

Beneath the roar of the crowd and the drum of a hundred men marching up the dock, Ivan said, “This is it, Paul! We’re off to the fuckin’ war!”

Paul shot him a broad sideways grin. Their duffels bounced on their backs with each step. By some miracle, the sun had deigned to cut through the low-hanging steely clouds to pierce the enormous side of the H.M.S. Hermes. She towered above them and dwarfed the long, wide dock where [her crew gathered.](http://liverpoolremembrance.weebly.com/uploads/2/9/5/6/2956791/7132606.jpg?582) Coils of rope thick as a man’s leg were strung tight between her and the dock, stretching over the thirty meters of choppy khaki water. The waves slapped against her grey hull. It was mind-boggling to think something so huge would soon be slicing through the open water of the Atlantic. More to the point – that _Paul_ would be there to experience it.

The realization made his stomach twist even tighter. Beneath his heavy, navy blue blazer, his skin pricked with sweat.

[Far above on the right](http://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/content/media/32/77932-small.jpg) came the incessant calls of civilians. Ivan caught Paul’s eye and, with a jerk of his chin, made Paul turn his head to watch as they marched past. People jostled for position, waving handkerchiefs or Union Jacks, the sharp sea wind whipping clothes and hats and hair. Girls with pinched red cheeks blew kisses to the lads, who laughed and nudged each other. An intense collective excitement whipped the air into a frenzy. Children dodged between the legs of the adults to keep pace of the troops. Paul noticed a little girl as she dashed along, pausing every now and then to peer beneath the rusted link and post that stopped the crowd from falling over the edge. She snatched his eye in an instant, her mouth breaking into a broad grin, but then the mass shifted and she was swallowed from view.

A civilian band tried to play a raucous rendition of [Fields’ famous song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EUytEX_XkE) Paul caught every second note before it was whipped away by the screams of good luck and general applause. A feverish heat bubbled within him. Paul grinned up at the crowd and they yelled back, waving their arms madly.

A shouted order from the front of the column rippled into effect. As one the lads stopped, arms straight by their sides, and waited until the order was given to rest easy.

“Where’s your girl, then?” Paul asked Ivan, who frowned and said, “What?”

The lads jostled around them, waving up at the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of their sweethearts or family. Someone yelled, “Go get ‘em, boys!”

Paul grabbed Ivan’s shoulder and hauled him close. “Where’s yer girl!”

“Oh!” Ivan shook his head briefly. “She saw me off last night. Had work this mornin’, ye know, at the factory, like.”

It was sort of astonishing to think how swiftly they’d all fallen into a new routine. The train stations had been choked for weeks with children heading out into the countryside. Pied Piper had plastered posters on every available wall: round faces darlings laughed and frolicked in meadows above a caption that read CHILDREN ARE SAFE IN THE COUNTRY! Across Liverpool the population had been seized with an industrial-strength wave of efficiency. Advertisements for cigarettes or hair products had been replaced with fearsome women in overalls – GIRLS – DO THE JOB HE LEFT BEHIND! – or glowering, shadowy figures that lurked behind men in phonebooths – HE IS LISTENING – STAY QUIET!

And beneath this, like an undercurrent of electricity in the air before a thunderstorm, a fierce sort of optimism gripped them all. It was half Liverpudlian _spit on yer hands and get on with it_ and half of something else, something deeper, that had rode on the back of unemployment and scrimping and saving, to rest on the shores of the War Effort. In a way, Liverpool had never had it easy; they had borne the brunt of misfortune for decades. War was just another wave that threatened to upturn their little boat.

That trail of thought lead him, as most things had since yesterday, to John. Ivan was loudly telling him a story about his girl in Paul’s ear as he scanned the crowd above, searching for that familiar tall figure… Part of him was a little embarrassed at the eagerness with which he’d given John his mailing details yesterday.

“Alright, alright,” John had grumbled, amused, looking down at the scrap of paper Paul had pressed into his hands. They were poised on the steps of the Post and Echo building; after the photo booth, John had mumbled an excuse about a man called Martin and something about saving his hide before Mimi ripped it from him, and so they’d wandered back up into town, Paul’s skin humming with the remembered press of John’s body beside him.

“That’s what sweethearts do, right?” Paul had teased, peering up at John, whose auburn hair had messily curled across his forehead. “They write t’each other. So: get writin’.”

“M’a cartoonist, not a ruddy journo,” John had complained, but he’d put the paper in his pocket anyway. For a long moment, they’d watched each other. The street had burbled about them, the rising cacophony of a city who was a single day away from waving their lads off for good, but all Paul could focus on was the way John looked.

The words burned on his tongue. _I want to remember this._ John, frowning against the sunlight that refracted off his little glasses. John, with his stately, aquiline nose, and the firm set of his full, proud mouth. His expression never softened from its natural inclination, which was somewhere between lazy and irritable, but when Paul had chanced a soft smile, something had flickered in the depths of John’s half-mast amber eyes.

“God,” John breathed, huffing out a laugh. “You better not die.”

Paul had raised an eyebrow. “I’ll try not to,” he promised wryly. “S’not really on me agenda. Dyin’.”

John took a step down so they were facing one another. The fact he was just slightly shorter than Paul sent an excited thrill through his veins. “If you die,” John warned, “I’ll bring ye back just t’kill ye meself.”

“A death worth waiting for,” Paul had replied solemnly, and John had tipped his head back and laughed as if something were breaking within him.

“How about you!” Ivan was yelling. Paul turned to him quickly, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “Your girl!” he elaborated, and mimed an action that could be anything from fornication to making a cup of tea. His bright blue eyes glittered and he grinned. “Where’s she at, then!”

Improvising, Paul said loudly, “At work, I think,” and Ivan made a knowing face. “Pity, that,” he added, and Paul said, “What?”

“Pity that!” Ivan grabbed Paul’s shoulder to speak into his ear. “Ye know what they’re sayin’! About the Germans!”

An uneasy trickle of fear bled through Paul’s mind. He set his mouth into a fixed smile. “Morale, sailor!” he reminded Ivan, who laughed. “Don’t ye go bringin’ the lads down with that kind of talk.”

Ivan gave him a mocking salute. “Aye, sir.”

Sunlight suddenly broke across the dock. Paul looked up as the crowd began to toss confetti down to the troops below. The men whooped, a frenzy of boyish excitement inciting one lad to hop onto the back of his mate and wave wildly to a gaggle of girls. This was like hearing the thunder in the distance, Paul realized. It was like looking on a plain horizon and knowing, feeling, that something was coming.

Seized with an intensity he’d not yet felt, Paul turned back around to scour the crowd. He shielded his eyes with one hand beneath the brim of his new lieutenant hat. Each cheering face slipped past his notice. The deep-bellied ship horn of the Hermes sounded abruptly behind him. From somewhere further up the column, a superior officer yelled, “Men, embark!”

 _No, wait._ Paul remained rooted to the ground. Men started to file past him, laughing and joking, and Ivan pulled once on his sleeve and said, “Come ‘ead, Paul – she’s not here!”

“When are ye leavin’ tomorrow?” John had asked him.

Paul’s eyes swept over every inch of John’s face, burning him into his memory. There was only so much that a photograph could capture. He needed… He _wanted…_ “Nine,” he replied, and swallowed down what he couldn’t say. Paul searched John’s gaze. “[At Albert Dock. ](http://www.cumberlandscarrow.com/Images/liverpool%20dock%20road.jpg)I’ll be at the front, in me new hat, y’know, for lieutenants.”

John nodded vaguely. “Those the ones with the bullseye painted on the top of ‘em, then?”

“Bastard.” Paul shot him a shy grin. After a strained pause, he blurted, “Will ye come?”

“Yes,” John answered immediately. And like in the photo booth, a shadow of something deep and longing simmered in his expression. John inhaled sharply and looked away. When he slowly met Paul’s eyes, he looked as vulnerable as he had when he’d brushed Paul’s hair from his forehead.

_I won’t be able to stop._

“Really?” Paul frowned against the fist in his throat.

“Yeah.” John was quiet, sure. He looked down at Paul’s mouth for a long moment before he said more intently, “Look for me.”

Paul looked. The troops spilled around him as if he were a rock in a river. Snatches of conversation filtered past, weaving dizzily with the roar of the crowd and the marching band. The lyrics swept through Paul’s mind – _Til we meet once again, you and I –_ and he was suddenly gripped with a fierce urge to make a run for it. To go, just go, to dash out of the column and up the wooden dock, up the broad stone steps two at a time, to shove through the crowd, searching for John, so he could tell him –

“Oi! McCartney!”

That voice rang through the cacophony. It struck Paul soundly as a thunderbolt. Paul whipped around wildly, picking through the crowd. His heart hammered in his ears. _I just need to see – I need to see you one more time –_

And there he was. John was right at the front of the crowd, waving his arms madly above his head. Their eyes met with a bolt of electricity. Paul broke into an ear-splitting grin. He cupped his hands to his mouth and bawled, “You bastard, Lennon!”

John couldn’t possibly have heard him over the din, but he laughed anyway, his teeth white and straight. His clever hands gripped the iron chains that swayed with the force of the crowd pressing against them. In his dotty tweed jacket, his white button up, and a flash of those suspenders against his flat, hard stomach, he was the most handsome person Paul had ever seen in his life. John’s hair rose fluffily around his narrowed eyes, the sunlight glinting off his specs, his cheeks flushed with the cool air and the wild excitement that thrummed through them both. Paul’s blood pounded beneath his skin. He didn’t look away from John, not when the men started to jostle him more forcefully, not even when the lieutenant shouted, “Embarkation underway, sir!”

At that moment, John leaned so far over the chains Paul instantly thought he’d go swinging over. Instead he pressed a hand to the side of his mouth – and this time his words came piercing through the raucous noise, the clamour of war, the terrible frightened thundering in Paul’s blood, the part of him that said, _No, this is a mistake,_ with those same lyrics whipping crazily through his mind. _Wish me luck! As you wave! Me goodbye!_

“Come back!”

They stared at each other. Paul, rooted where he stood, breathing sharply through his nose. John, his grin fading on his smooth, tanned face. The wind hurtled along the dock, sending a torrent of white confetti to blow like snow into the harbour. Over the flurry of movement came the brass section of the band, a deep swell of music that brimmed up through Paul’s veins as if he’d summoned it from within himself.

“I will!” _I wish I had kissed you. I wish I had kissed you._ “I will, I’ll come back!”

“You better bloody promise!” John bawled. Instantly he looked furious, his words thrumming with an urgency Paul knew was mirrored in his own expression.

“Embarkation, underway!”

Paul tore himself away to see the end of the column rapidly approaching. Another enormous sound of the ship horn rumbled over them all. The next time it blew, they would be at sea. Paul whipped around to find John in the crowd again.

He drew in a lungful of briny air. Paul clapped his hands around his mouth. “John Lennon!” His voice boomed in his chest. He imagined it pounding through the crowd, over the assembly trucks and sailor hats, between the legs of the civilians, around the children, and straight to the one person he wanted it to reach.

Terror beat through his body. For a horrible moment words failed him. Then he inhaled and, for all he was worth, shouted, “Wait for me!”

The crowd swelled. John’s auburn head slipped from view. _No!_ Paul dashed down the line, urging John to reappear. “Paul!” came a distant, nasal voice. “Write to me!”

 _I will. I will._ “Last call, embarkation!” The troops pushed more solidly, shoulders shoving past Paul, their boots drumming on the dock. Paul found himself stumbling back towards the broad metal gangway that heaved with soldiers waiting to climb aboard. He craned above the crowd, adrenaline making him light-headed. “Move it,” someone grunted, “come on, lad, get goin’.” John’s head suddenly reappeared. A long-fingered hand waved blurrily above the mass of people. Paul’s throat was so tight he could barely breathe.

Paul shoved his hand into the air and waved. He felt absurdly young. He felt like he was losing something. Someone grabbed his shoulder and made to pull him up the gangway. The screams of the crowd burred into a dull roar. _There, quick._ John was at the chains again. He was too far away to make out any more than a pale figure shining in the sun. Confetti sailed through the air. Drumbeats echoed out across the water. _Heart of Oak_ started to twine around them. [A distant chant sounded:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NXFCDgyanA) _Stead-y, bo-ys, ste-ady!_

 _I’ll come back._ The thought was loud in his mind. Paul breathed deep.

_I’m coming back to you, John._

**Author's Note:**

> @stonedlennon on tumblr - come cry with me about these two.


End file.
